


Cold case

by prudence_dearly



Category: Sungkyunkwan Scandal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prudence_dearly/pseuds/prudence_dearly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people are just natural policemen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold case

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first SKK fanfic. I’m a pakeha (white) woman writing in New Zealand, with no experience of Korean culture or history beyond TV and internet research. Please forgive my ignorance (particularly when it comes to names). Thanks to china_shop for beta.

“You know, there’s something to what he says.”

Han Jong-Wu put his bowl down abruptly. His wife avoided his eyes, lifting more beans onto her own plate.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been picking up those leaflets?”

“When one falls right in front of your eyes, a person can’t help seeing what it says - ”

“Try harder,” growled Jong-Wu. “Close your eyes and pretend to be blind. If you’re found with the Red Writer’s leaflets, we’ll both be in big trouble. And how do you think it would make me look - a Hanseongbu official whose wife is reading the writings of a hoodlum I am charged with capturing?”

Park Min-Seo kept quiet as her husband fumed. The crickets outside played an awkward serenade. Min-Seo’s mind wandered to the three red papers folded and tucked inside her blouse. Perhaps it was not sensible to keep them. She had enjoyed reading them, though. It was her husband who had taught her to read in the first place, shortly after they were married. From the way he was muttering into his rice, he was having second thoughts about the wisdom of that idea, now. At the time, he had spoken of how important it was to be able to read, how much safer a woman would be who could understand the newspapers, royal decrees, signs in the market place. It was a crime to waste a clever woman, he had said.

“I agree with him,” she said thoughtfully, causing Jong-Wu to choke on his mouthful. He coughed as she continued, “The way things are in the world - it isn’t right. The Noron holding us common people hostage for their own gain. And you know it, Jong-Wu!” She fixed him with a stern glare even as he opened his mouth to speak. “I’ve heard you often enough when you’ve had some wine - ”

“That’s enough,” snapped her husband. “It doesn’t matter if his morals are sound or his verse is well-written. He’s breaking the law, and it’s my job to find him and stop him. Nobody is above the law, not even the people’s poet.”

Min-Seo tilted her head at him sympathetically and patted him on the hand.

“Now who’s being blind?”

*

Jong-Wu was writing his daily report as his fellow officials got ready to leave. He knew for a fact that his superior official would not read it. The man was seldom sober enough to see straight. But Jong-Wu had been trained by the great Han Yeong-Gi, his uncle, who had been a Hanseongbu official for thirty years without a single blot on his record. And the mainstay of Han Yeong-Gi’s career was paperwork.

“Making more fire-lighters, Jong-Wu?” One of his fellow officials threw himself down beside Jong-Wu in a gust of alcohol fumes. “We’re going to the pleasure house. Leave your beloved reports and have fun with us for once.”

“It’s no good,” Park Kwang-Jo chipped in from the doorway. “Jong-Wu’s got a bee in his bonnet about the Red Writer and he won’t rest until he catches the fellow himself.”

Everyone in the room roared with laughter. Jong-Wu clenched his jaw and continued to write.

“Jong-Wu, catch the Red Writer?”

“You know the Minister of War’s soldiers are looking for the Red Writer - do you think you’ll beat them to it?”

“I’d like to see a paper-pusher like you face the Red Writer. You were born to be an accountant, Jong-Wu. Don’t dream too big. You’ll end up getting hurt.”

*

The blade flashed in the torchlight and Jong-Wu would swear he saw sparks fly when the swords met.

They had the Red Writer cornered in a marketplace by the river. This had to be it, surely. Jong-Wu gripped his spear and swallowed hard. He had arrested his fair share of petty thieves, drunks and so on over the years. This Red Writer, though, was a properly trained fighter. And he was young. Jong-Wu could tell from his stature and the way he moved. He was practically dancing - playing, even. Yes, this was a game of cat and mouse to the boy. He was enjoying it.

*

“And I cut him - hya! - right on the arm! The blood flew out like a fan!” Park Kwang-Jo’s audience gasped appreciatively.

“You actually saw the blood?” asked Jong-Wu. Kwang-Jo, surprised to have his attention, turn to him dramatically.

“Oh, yes, I saw his blood, and it was as red as his stupid leaflets.” Kwang-Jo put an arm around Jung-Wu’s shoulders. “My blade flew out like a viper and slashed him just here.” He drew his finger across Jong-Wu’s right bicep.

“Just there? Are you sure? No higher or lower?”

Kwang-Jo gave a cluck of exasperation. “What are you, his doctor? Yes, it was just there, no higher or lower.” He abandoned his tedious colleague. “Let’s all go and drink wine and you can hear my story again.”

There was a cheer and the crowd of them moved off, leaving Jong-Wu to return thoughtfully to his writing desk.

*

“And there. And another there.”

Jong-Wu craned over his wife’s shoulder and watched critically as she made another stroke on the page. She had deftly drawn the figure to his instructions, including a face replicated from the composites posted all over town. For propriety’s sake, she had painted on a loincloth; that and the face mask were all the figure wore.

Slim-built. Muscled, but not bulky. A common enough description, until Jong-Wu got out his list and they began to draw on the scars. Most were on the arms and torso; a couple on the legs. An arrow here, a blade there. Every soldier and guard who had ever been known to spar with the Red Writer and draw blood had been interviewed, as thoroughly as Jong-Wu could manage before they tired of him and told him to get lost.

And now the picture began to emerge.

“A shame,” murmured Min-Seo, as she precisely inscribed a cut across the right bicep. “I’m sure he was a very handsome boy before all this fighting.”

“Handsome? Who cares for handsome?”

Min-Seo said nothing.

“Didn’t you hear what he did two nights ago?” insisted Jong-Wu. “Robbing people - the same people he claimed to speak for. And he nearly killed a warehouse guard. That’s not the same as crossing swords with the Minister of War’s soldiers. He’s turning into a common thug!”

“Everybody knows that wasn’t him,” Min-Seo said calmly.

*

Jong-Wu knew it, too, three nights later. They cornered the Red Writer in the mercantile district, and it was the wrong man.

Slim built, young, clothed all in black, but different. Well-trained, too, elegant, the same relish for the fray, but still… there was no question. This was not the same man.

He was gone in a flash - over a wall and away. The Minister of War’s private guard, who had called for help in the first place and brought a group Hanseongbu officials scurrying, gave up the chase immediately.

More rumours spread about the Red Writer that night. Jong-Wu was not the only one who had noted a difference.

*

“Can’t you leave it?” demanded Min-Seo, standing in the small courtyard of their small home. Night had fallen long before her husband had finally come home. Any other woman would suspect an affair, but she knew better. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”

“I know,” said Jong-Wu tiredly. “That’s what makes me a good investigator.”

“And a terrible husband.”

He put his hands gently on her shoulders. “Wouldn’t you be proud to be the wife of the man who caught the Red Writer?”

Min-Seo shot him a glare. “I would be proud to be the wife of a man who knows better than to play with fire,” she said. “Please, Jong-Wu. They say the Red Writer is tied up with the government somehow. The King is involved. If you get caught up in all this, you could be the one who ends up dead, not that poor young man.”

*

The boy confessed and came quietly. They found his bloodied black robes in his dormitory. Aside from his confession, he wouldn’t say a thing. And that was all Jong-Wu knew when he arrived at the prison.

As a Hanseongbu official he could enter easily enough, but it took some negotiations and the passing of a bribe (the first and, he hoped, last in his career) to be allowed through the door to see the Red Writer.

The boy sat in his cell, chin on his chest, shoulders slumped. Jong-Wu cleared his throat noisily. When the boy looked up, he cut to the chase. He only had a few minutes. “Take off your jeogori.”

“What do you mean?” the boy said, confused, getting to his feet. “Why?”

He was slim-built, about the right height, and there were cuts and bruises on his face that attested to the latest fight. Jong-Wu narrowed his eyes at the kid, the son of the Prime Minister. He held himself properly, none of the lithe attitude Jong-Wu had seen before. But perhaps that only came out when the boy was fighting.

“Your jeogori,” Jong-Wu repeated. “Take off your clothes. I must inspect your skin.”

“Why?” the boy demanded again, becoming angry now.

Jong-Wu played his only card, hoping it would work. “I must record your injuries. If you are mistreated by the wardens, we will know. It is for your protection.”

A lie, and if the boy had any knowledge of this prison he would have recognised it immediately. But he was uncertain.

“If you do not obey, I must bring other guards in here to hold you down.” Jong-Wu felt sick. He was not a natural liar. “Please, let us get this over with.”

As the boy complied, Jong-Wu took out a piece of paper and unfolded it carefully. He was using the drawing for thoroughness, but it was obvious straight away. There were cuts and bruises on the boy’s skin, but no trace of anything more serious. No map of scars, no evidence.

Jong-Wu went straight to his superior and reported.

“What has it got to do with me?” Lee Bok-Soo, Hanseongbu’s top official, whined. “He’s a prisoner of the Minister of Justice not Hanseongbu.”

“You could talk to the Minister - ”

“Be quiet, Han Jong-Wu! The boy confessed. Stop making trouble with your crazy theories and pictures. Go back to your desk, where you belong.”

When Lee Sun-Joon was acquitted and released, Jong-Wu did not bother to point out that he had been right.

*

Park Min-Seo kept the last of the red leaflets. It had fluttered down to her feet that evening and she picked it up, tucked it away, intending to burn it later, as was her habit now. But no more leaflets came, time passed and the Red Writer faded into the shadows. She wished she had kept more of his writing, that dashing poetry that had stirred the blood.

The last proclamation, the vindication of the boy who was wrongly arrested, she kept. It was a vindication of her husband, too.

She hid it amongst her winter cloaks, hoping he would never find it and have his frustrations stirred up again.

“Just let it be,” she told him. “It’s over now.”

*

“Lee Bok-Soo was stupid, but at least he wasn’t an ogre,” said one of the officials. They were crammed into the main office, waiting nervously.

“Yes, you knew where you stood with Lee Bok-Soo,” agreed another. “This new man could be anyone.”

“I hear he’s a slave driver,” said another voice. “Shows no mercy. Short tempered. Very nasty piece of work.”

Jong-Wu had already spotted the newcomer to the room and did his best to fade into the background.

The man was wearing his uniform, but not the elaborate feathered hat that came with it, and it took the others a moment to register who he was.

“Superior!”

“Sir!”

“Our new commander!”

“Welcome!”

 

*

Mun Jae-Shin, Jong-Wu found out over the next few weeks through discreet investigation, had trained in the King’s private guard. He was the son of the former Minister of Justice (now retired), and was a Sungkyunkwang graduate, which at least meant he could read and write. Deeper digging revealed that the men of his previous command had mixed views of him.

Some (the lazy ones, Jong-Wu judged) despised him for driving them too hard, demanding too much, and kicking out those who didn’t measure up. And he was young - an upstart, helped to power by his father and his friends. Others (steadier, less greedy men) still warned that Mun Jae-Shin demanded much, but that he worked twice as hard as any of his men, and that he was fair, though short-tempered.

“He has friends in high places,” griped one hard-done-by soldier.

“I saw him fight off six bandits single-handed,” said another.

“Send him back,” said a third. “He was the best officer I’ve ever had.”

*

“Han Jong-Wu.”

The call was more of a bark. Jong-Wu, slinking past his superior’s office, hoping not to be seen, stopped in his tracks. “Sir?”

“Come in.” Mun Jae-Shin was lounging at his writing desk. It was late and he rubbed a hand over his face, looking tired. “Sit down. I was reading your reports.”

“Which ones, sir?”

“All of them. Do you know, you are the only official here who writes regular reports? I’ve gone back 12 years. There they all are.” He gestured to piles of flimsy paper rolls. “Where did you learn to be so thorough?”

“My uncle, sir. Han Yeong-Gi. He was an official here. He taught me all of the official processes.” Jong-Wu squirmed under Mun Jae-Shin’s lazy stare. The man never seemed to fully open his eyes unless he was enraged. All other times it was as if he could barely be bothered to stay awake. A facade, of course. But an effective one. People would let all kinds of things slip when they thought the boss wasn’t listening. And if that didn’t get him what he wanted, he would shout, which was also effective.

“My friends say I was born to be an accountant,” said Jong-Wu, to fill the silence, “and I only came to Hanseongbu by mistake. I… I just like everything to be in its place, sir.”

*

Jong-Wu found that Mun Jae-Shin was not a friendly man. He made enemies easily, not least among his men. But he had never taken a bribe, Jong-Wu found. He shouted at his men, but not at the cleaning women. He drank too much, but only when he was not on duty.

He called Jong-Wu to join him one summer afternoon to look into the theft of some salt. It was tedious work, and Mun Jae-Shin’s growls and shuffling feet indicated it was not the type of investigating he enjoyed. Jong-Wu, however, was in his element, inspecting receipts and invoices and a papertrail which led, eventually, to a carter with an eye for opportunity.

“He’s the boss’s right-hand man, now,” said Park Kwang-Jo that winter, watching Jong-Wu and Mun Jae-Shin walking out together. “The commander likes to keep his accountant by his side.”

“Who would want Han Jong-Wu by their side in a fight?” said another official. “Not me. But even I would want him there if I had to find out who paid who, how much and when, a hundred years ago.”

“Boring stuff,” said Park Kwang-Jo. “Give me bandits any day.”

*

The office was alive with rumours before Mun Jae-Shin came slamming through the front door, soaked to the skin and already barking orders.

“Another fire,” whispered one man.

“The boss ran in,” countered another, “and saw the arsonist escaping. He chased him right into the river.”

“He got away,” was one remark.

“Not for long, I bet.”

They scattered at Mun Jae-Shin’s approach, water dripping off him as he strode to his office, shouting for a double guard on the East Gate.

“Han Jong-Wu!” he yelled over his shoulder. “In here.”

Jong-Wu hurried in.

“You were there last week when the third fire broke out,” Mun Jae-Shin said. “Have you written your report?” He stripped off his sodden robe and pulled at the ties of his jeogori. “What am I saying? Of course you have. Fetch it, would you?”

Jong-Wu went to the cabinet and found his report, rolled up tightly. He unrolled it, turning back to his commander.

“What is it you’re - ” He broke off.

Mun Jae-Shin stood in his underpants, rubbing a cloth over himself.

“I have a spare uniform in there,” he said, pointing to a linen box in the corner. “Never mind,” he added impatiently when his officer didn’t move, “I’ll get it myself.”

It had been years, but Jong-Wu hadn’t forgotten. How could he?

“I think there’s a connection between the fires and Lee Ha-Seong’s gambling house. I want you to go back through the reports and tell me if the gambling house was operating on the nights of the fires, and find out who was there on those nights. Han Jong-Wu? Did you hear me?”

Jong-Wu closed his mouth.

Then he nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

*

A week later, Jong-Wu told his wife of his intentions, and endured a full night’s argument. She was a convincing woman, not easily ignored, but his mind was made up.

“When did you ever listen to me, anyway?” she scolded in the morning, straightening his hat before he stepped out the door. “Every time you get a bee in your bonnet, you’re off in your own world and won’t listen to anyone.” She ducked under the brim of the hat and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Is there any chance that this man might kill you for uncovering his secret?” There were tears in her eyes.

*

“You’re here late, Han Jong-Wu. Again.” Mun Jae-Shin signed a warrant, set down his brush and stretched, feeling his back click.

Jong-Wu slid closed the office doors and came to kneel at his superior’s desk. He said nothing, but held out a folded slip of paper. Mun Jae-Shin sat up straight and paid attention.

“What is it?” asked Mun Jae-Shin, as he took the offered paper.

The thing unfolded before him, heavily creased by years of being carried around, opened and reopened. A carefully drawn outline of a masked man, naked but for a loincloth, his body criss-crossed with scars. Every mark was precisely placed and clearly visible, though age had dulled the ink.

Mun Jae-Shin cleared his throat.

“I wondered about you,” he said at last. “All those reports. You seemed to follow the Red Writer at every step. And you notice things and write them down. Very good for a lawman. Not good news for a hoodlum trouble-maker.” He placed the paper on his desk. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?” Jong-Wu repeated, blankly.

“You could have me thrown out, or arrested,” said Mun Jae-Shin. He raised a knee and slouched down against the wall, watching Jong-Wu from under hooded eyes. “I have plenty of enemies who would like to do that, with your help. Or you could blackmail me, I suppose, although that doesn’t seem like you.”

“Arresting you seems like me, sir?”

Mun Jae-Shin almost smiled, and shook his head.

“You are dogged, detailed and you believe in the law,” he said. “These things I know about you. And you do not have any particular care for rank or power or politics. You might wish to see a miscreant brought to justice at last.”

“No, sir.” Jong-Wu bowed his head. “I simply wished to know the truth. Now I have found it, I doubt very much that anyone else would be interested. Nobody has been before, no matter how correct my theories turned out to be. Nobody until you came here. Which is why I wanted to tell you, sir. I, your officer, have solved the mystery of the Red Writer. And I have handed him over to you.”

Mun Jae-Shin regarded him silently. A peculiar paper-pusher of a man, with the determination to follow a trail for years, a head for numbers, an eye for detail and no political skill at all. Probably hadn’t ever held a sword in his life. All those fights, all those scars and bloodstains, the frantic chases down alleyways and over rooftops, the hiding in shadows and stepping into traps - and it came to this.

“Thank you for your diligence, Han Jong-Wu,” said Mun Jae-Shin eventually.

“Thank you, sir.” Jong-Wu let his words out with a breath of relief. “And now, sir, with your permission, I will go home to my wife. She worries about me.”


End file.
